Procrastination

You'd think a virus that is keeping us all indoors would also keep us writing. But procrastination is the thief of time, there's plenty of time for it to steal, and I am a procrastinator. To console myself with the thought that even procrastinators can, eventually, produce the goods, I keep, pinned to a shelf beside my desk, this riff on the subject by P.J. O'Rourke:

“Usually, writers will do anything to avoid writing. For instance, the previous sentence was written at one o’clock this afternoon. It is now a quarter to four. I have spent the past two hours and forty-five minutes sorting my neckties by width, looking up the word ‘paisley’ in three dictionaries, attempting to find the town of that name on The New York Times Atlas of the World map of Scotland, sorting my reference books by width, trying to get the bookcase to stop wobbling by stuffing a matchbook cover under its corner, dialing the telephone number on the matchbook cover to see if I should take computer courses at night, looking at the computer ads in the newspaper and deciding to buy a computer because writing seems to be so difficult on  my old Remington, reading an interesting article on sorghum farming in Uruguay that was in the newspaper next to the computer ads, cutting that and other interesting articles out of the newspaper, sorting – by width – all the interesting articles I’ve cut out of newspapers recently, fastening them neatly together with paper clips and making a very attractive paper clip necklace and bracelet set, which I will present to my girlfriend as soon as she comes home from the three-hour low-impact aerobic workout that I made her go to so I could have some time alone to write.”
My first act of procrastination today has been to write this blog entry.
I need to mop the kitchen floor.
But first, an extract from the poem, 'Night Thoughts' by Edward Young, who gave us the best known aphorism about procrastination. 
"Be wise to-day; ’t is madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,         
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene."